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Tuesday, March 18, 2008

First of all, I want to apologize for the lack of posts in the past couple of months. I didn't intend on taking such a long time off of posting but sometimes life kinda gets in the way. I promise that I haven't given up on this blog - in fact, I have a huge backlog of posts, just waiting in the wings. I thank you, dear readers, for your patience.

When I started this blog, it was simply to catalog some of the foods that came out of Annie's kitchen as well as other food-related experiences our family has had. I have been challenged to make this blog better, more entertaining, and more informative. So, in the coming days, you'll begin to see changes in the layout as well as the content.

When I was growing up, I didn't know how to cook. I had to learn by starting with the basics - how to cook rice, how to boil water, how to start a fire by rubbing two sticks together (well, okay it wasn't that basic!). Likewise, Annie didn't start off immediately knowing how to make a quiche from scratch - she had to learn how to make hard boiled eggs first. Thus far, the House of Annie blog has been about boiling eggs.

Now, it's time to start making quiche.

Annie's method for perfect hard boiled eggs

Start off with your eggs in a cold pot of water on the stove.

Turn the heat to high and set the timer for 15 minutes.

As soon as the water boils, turn the heat down to the lowest setting.*

When the timer goes off, drain the hot water and refill the pot with cold water.

As you're filling the pot, take an egg out and tap it all over to crack the shell.

Return the egg to the cold water and repeat with the next egg

By the time you're finished cracking 6 eggs, the first one will be ready to peel.

Serve with a few drops of soy sauce and a few dashes of ground white pepper (preferrably from Sarawak)

Besides eating them as-is, you could turn them into cute shapes using these Japanese egg molds, or you could also cut them up and use them in Chopped Salad:

* A lot of recipes tell you to wait until the water boils before lowering the heat and setting the timer to 10 or 12 minutes. In my opinion, this is way too long. Our idea of perfect hard boiled eggs is when the yolk is still slightly creamy in the center. This usually takes only 6 or 7 minutes. Any longer, and the yolk gets dry and crumbly and, frankly, hard to swallow.

4 Comments:

Those are beautiful eggs! I still remember the first time I tried to cook...I was in 6th grade and my mom told me to make pasta while she was gone. "Boil water, put the pasta in, and take it out when it's done" was all she said. I didn't know how to boil water. Needless to say, the pasta was never cooked and I got in trouble.